Russia— Tattoo scenes & cities

In Russia, until 1846, convicts sentenced to hard labour were branded with the word “VOR”, thief. That year, this brand was replaced by “KAT”, short for hard-labour convict. In the 1930s, criminal castes turned tattoos into a sign of rank and reputation: stars for authority, church cupolas for the number of convictions, skulls for murderers.

This prison practice peaked in the 1950s, then declined in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1985, perestroika and the growing number of tattoo parlours made tattooing fashionable and weakened its status as a purely criminal mark. The “thieves in law” also use forced tattooing, sometimes as punishment.